The Caryatids

Montalban looked down the beach, where Karen was cheerfully playing with his daughter. "The Dispensation and the Acquis are a stable, two-party, global system. But the world is in desperate shape-so we have to try extreme solutions. Most of them fail, because they are so extreme. But whenever they work- that's when the world has to take notice. The whole point of having our two-party system is to have a system for reality checks against the extremist groups." Montalban spread his hands. "In any place but Europe, they'd teach that in elementary civics classes."

"We're not an 'extremist group' here. We are rescue workers and geo-engineers."

"Of course you're an extremist group. Of course you are! You've got mind-reading helmets on your heads! Look at those shaven patches on your scalp! You don't even walk like normal people here-you all walk like you could bend over backward like crabs! Plus, this island is covered with weird labor camps that practice sensory totalitarianism! Anyone from the outside world could learn all that in a day."

Montalban knotted his hands. "So: The reason the Acquis was allowed to work here is that the climate crisis is bipartisan. If the seas rise, then the ark sinks, and we will all drown. We know that. So when it comes to fighting the climate crisis, we are willing to allow anything. But when you succeed at what you try, that's different. Then the consequences come."

"Why don't you run along home and let us finish the job here?"

"That is not a reasonable option. Your little experiment here: It violates civil rights, it violates human rights, it exploits desperate refugees as indentured labor with no access to the free market...This place is scary. I can rescue you from all that. I can save you from all those consequences. Because I will make you its queen."

"I can't even understand what you're saying! What exactly do you want from me? Use some real words."

"Okay: Here's the elevator pitch. Instead of being a test bed for a weird neural cult, Mljet becomes what it should be: a tourist island. Mljet becomes a normal place. It's decent, it's noncontroversial. This island has been saved, redeemed, reconstructed. That work is over. The cult relocates elsewhere."

"Where do my people go?"

"We give them an assignment that's better suited to their talents and technologies."

"Where are you putting my people?"

"The Lesser Antarctic Ice Shelf."

"You're exiling us to Antarctica." Vera looked at the glimmering edge of her native hills. "All right, that part I finally understand. Thank you for finally telling me."

" They go, Vera. You don't go. You stay. You encourage them to leave this place and work on the ice, and you remain here under the new dispensation. Because we're not 'exiling' the cult to Antarctica: we're promoting the cult to Antarctica."

"Why would they go to a place like that? It's horrible there. It's flooding and melting, it's like death."

"Because they're very good at redemption work and someone has to go there. The Big Ice is the front line of the climate crisis. Now, listen: Your boss, the Acquis commissar here, he's a pretty hard nut to crack. But he can do a budget. He has ambitions. He's an engineer: so he wants new hardware. They always do."

Montalban bent and smoothed his pocket film against the ground. A monstrous apparition emerged on the flimsy screen.

This metal monster brandished a drill on one hand, a backhoe on the other, and its sloping feet were the size of two fishing boats.

"This is a neurally controlled continental reconstruction unit. It's a giant robot exoskeleton that's nuclear-powered and four stories tall. Every one of these psychotic things costs as much as a full-scale Mississippi mud dredge. They're airtight, they're fully heated, they've got interior life-support systems, they're basically Martian spacesuits with legs. Building these crazy things for him: That's the price that he demands from us."

Vera stared. "That big robot does looks kind of...weird."

"This darling of his has been sitting on his drawing board ever since he was in graduate school. Frankly, no sane capitalist would ever finance such a thing. Because it's got no market pull at all. It's a wild, macho, engineer's power fantasy."

Montalban leaned back on his slab of tarmac and tipped his sun hat. "We have agreed to his terms. A monster machine like this makes no sense to me, but nobody thought his Mljet plan would ever work out, either. It turns out he was right, and we were wrong. We admit that now. He wins. Mljet is light, and speedy, and brilliant, and glorious. Your boss has proved himself to the smart money and the power players. He has won. So if your boss plays some ball with us, he gets whatever the hell he wants."

Vera gazed at the bristling, fantastic monster. The giant robot had no head. She tried to imagine her Herbert sealed inside that giant, stamping coffin, that rock-shattering hulk.

She knew that Herbert would do it. Of course he would do it.